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A Bay Area doctor who survived cancer, has developed an app to help doctors and patients share information, with the hopes to better combat the disease.

According to the Mercury News, Dr Marty Tenenbaum plans to release a web application on Tuesday intended to bring together patients, physicians and scientists regardless of where they work, live or went to college in hopes that the so-called wisdom of the crowd can lead to the best therapies.

"I'm just trying to pull together all the pieces that are needed to do a real, rational attack on cancer," Tenenbaum says. The way to do that, he says, is to pull people out of their individual labs, offices and hospitals to collaborate in a way not possible before the Web and mobile technologies made it easy to pool vast amounts of information.

The app, called Cancer Commons, integrates the existing data on different forms of melanoma and the most promising experimental treatments. Patients or their doctors input how far the disease has progressed, where it started and whether tests have discovered any specific genetic mutations believed to contribute to the cancer's spread.